Re: Blocking Evolution

Quantum physics, via the tiny Planck size and the short Planck time, deems the universe to be of discrete grains, which is what 'quantum' means. This is the opposite of a continuum. (At high numbers it can approximate a continuum.)

So, then, this clashes with Relativity, thus the quantum gravity theory attempts, for everything else has already been quantized. 'Space' is the gravitational field.

I'm going to consider this an "aside" from my main juxtaposition between the Block and Evolution.

As you know I came from a different angle and you mentioned that sounded like a Block, when I went to see what you were speaking of I found the Growing Block and knew that was not what I meant, later I discovered Eternalism is used to describe the type of block (Time) dimension I was using. So this being said, don't expect my terminology to always be right on.

Next, I realize Relativity and quantum mechanics are not necessarily the same thing. I try to use Relativity when speaking of the Block, if I use Quantum I am usually making a distinction between Newtonian and Quantum physics of which I consider Relativity a foundational crutch of. Relativity providing the vision, quantum mechanic seeking some kind of explanation of....

Speaking of the quantum, although it seemed understood through Einstein that matter and energy were the same thing, I find it interesting we are always referring to the smallest particle. We speak about the photon as if it is a particle, and one might say it is article like, but with just as much evidence to support it as being a particle, so is there evidence it is not. But without going deeper as even the photon is attempted to be subdivided, lets assume for a minute this is the base unit.

Something, the photon let say, is created out of nothing, kind of a miniature big bang, although perhaps a little bang but a big deal (that's was a joke, kinda) Anyway, as we pretend this is the smallest "thing" ever, where does it come from.

This is where my post "Sound and Silence" comes in, at our macro level of existence, we find that in a relatively realm of silence, silence being analogous for an infinite static state, simply by compressing the available medium (air in this case), sound is produced. Sound then becomes analogous for all things finite even as sound expressed those same finite qualities, most importantly a beginning and an end. This compression produced both a wave, sound travelling, and a particle as it were, as sound impacts us as if it is a thing.

Out there, sound is simply waves, but as the travel to the brain and consciousness takes note, those waves become things, vowels, nouns, words, information. No the medium at this point for silence to become sound is air.

Creation something out of nothing, lets say a photon, is simply that which is "Nothing" undergoing the same type of compression, the catalyst of which is beyond our dimension of time,space, this universe. M-theory hints at this by theorizing other branes (universes) of different dimensional qualities or energies our impacting us (our brane) and thus passing their frequencies (?) along to us. I don't agree with the Brane theory as much as I simply see the overall impregnation of outside frequencies (compression waves) impacting the field medium of Nothingness that cause it to give rise to our universal something-ness.

So, from the simplicity of sound being produced from silence, I can see our universe arising from a sea of Nothingness. Now all this seems to be format in a time frame, we speak, air is compressed, sound begins, the waves collapse and sound dissipates back into the silence.

But being INSIDE the sound, as we are inside this universe, that sound is constant, static, one set wave from the beginning to the end. And as if we (our life) where a worm creeping along that wave for a moment, we would experience time as we move along it, but it does not move, neither does it change.

Realistically this universe would contain several waves, overlapping and generating interference and the like, so we might say smaller particle seem to exist, and there are physicists who feel quantum mechanics has gone to far in this regard. But that's another story.

In telling the story above, because I do not use physics terminology or refer much to this theory or that, some who don't have a very deep understanding of physics might think my views to be unscientific. I would say rather that the depth of my understanding allows me to simply it.

Re: Blocking Evolution

Everyone does their own thinking to some degree or another, the question is where to find the balance between between this and being able to LISTEN and take seriously what other people say as well. There is not only the imbalance of those who simply parrot what other people say without sufficient critical thinking, but there is also the other end of the spectrum in those who learn nothing from the contribution of other people (which is equally lacking in critical thinking). There is foolishness in both ends of the spectrum.

I agree, which is why I don't dismiss people out of hand or categorize them only to infer evil motives. Btu as I have said elsewhere, as regards the promotion of evolution as an established facts, when there are gaps in the theory, and scientist offer up other theories to bridge those gaps, the theories thus offered do not magically because factual explanations, they still reside in the boundaries of possibilities even if stated as probabilities.

mitchellmckain » August 18th, 2018, 12:52 pm

""""Even in that context, Gregory Matloff’s ideas are shocking. The veteran physicist at New York City College of Technology recently published a paper arguing that humans may be like the rest of the universe in substance and in spirit. A “proto-consciousness field”"""""..........

Mitchell, That is a maybe which includes God, gods, ghosts, psychics, UFO abductions, fairies and unicorns. There is is no objective evidence of any such thing............

This was not written by me but was part of one article, I do not go to such extremes as some might, my goal was to establish for the time being that many are connecting Consciousness as a foundational principle in the universe, since we keep getting drawn back to those who simply want to defend evolution without considering a broader picture of the universe as a whole as physics might perceive it. Physics reveals part of our, if not all of our, intuitive experience MIGHT be under an illusion. The common argument between religion and (evolutionary) science can be seen as two sides of the same coin, both empowered by the objective illusion of Time.

I do not ascribe to the full body of many of these scientists as regards how consciousness and physics intertwine so I shall not spent time defending them.

mitchellmckain » August 18th, 2018, 12:52 pm

(Brent) "The subject once again is Einstein's Block Universe, with considerations of how consciousness might factor into such a Block, and how such a static block might reflect itself into a static history that would defy the necessity for continuity.

(Michell) Not interested.

Since you seem to have expressed interest in consciousness as it applies in other spheres, then you might want to start your own thread since you do not wish to follow this threads theme.

Re: Blocking Evolution

'Nothing' doesn't have a medium; 'it' doesn't have anything. Perhaps you might want have something like energy be the mandatory basis of existence, 'existence' having no opposite, since 'Nothing' cannot be.

Re: Blocking Evolution

The theory of evolution is not perfect, there are gaps, there are spaces that are difficult to explain, whether we are talking about the first cell to replicate or the mad jump from Micro to Macro that is hidden in vast amounts of time,..

(David) Holy wow! Am I surprised? No! I predicted this!

There you are back yet again talking about the first replicating cell, when I have repeatedly pointed out to you that the first replicator was NOT A CELL, and there you are banging on about this "mad jump" nonsense when there was no such thing ... well, carry on with your nonsense.

"""""""HomeFeaturesLife158FEATURE 10 August 2011First life: The search for the first replicatorBy Michael Marshall

Dawn of the living Life must have begun with a simple molecule that could reproduce itself – and now we think we know how to make one

4 BILLION years before present: the surface of a newly formed planet around a medium-sized star is beginning to cool down. It’s a violent place, bombarded by meteorites and riven by volcanic eruptions, with an atmosphere full of toxic gases. But almost as soon as water begins to form pools and oceans on its surface, something extraordinary happens. A molecule, or perhaps a set of molecules, capable of replicating itself arises.

This was the dawn of evolution. Once the first self-replicating entities appeared, natural selection kicked in, favouring any offspring with variations that made them better at replicating themselves. Soon the first simple cells appeared. The rest is prehistory.

Billions of years later, some of the descendants of those first cells evolved into organisms intelligent enough to wonder what their very earliest ancestor was like. What molecule started it all?

As far back as the 1960s, a few of those intelligent organisms began to suspect that the first self-replicating molecules were made of RNA, a close cousin of DNA. This idea has always had a huge problem, though – there was no known way by which RNA molecules could have formed on the primordial Earth. And if RNA molecules couldn’t form spontaneously, how could self-replicating RNA molecules arise? Did some other replicator come first? If so, what was it? The answer is finally beginning to emerge.

When biologists first started to ponder how life arose, the question seemed baffling. In all organisms alive today, the hard work is done by proteins. Proteins can twist and fold into a wild diversity of shapes, so they can do just about anything, including acting as enzymes, substances that catalyse a huge range of chemical reactions. However, the information needed to make proteins is stored in DNA molecules. You can’t make new proteins without DNA, and you can’t make new DNA without proteins. So which came first, proteins or DNA?

The discovery in the 1960s that RNA could fold like a protein, albeit not into such complex structures, suggested an answer. If RNA could catalyse reactions as well as storing information, some RNA molecules might be capable of making more RNA molecules. And if that was the case, RNA replicators would have had no need for proteins. They could do everything themselves.

It was an appealing idea, but at the time it was complete speculation. No one had shown that RNA could catalyse reactions like protein enzymes. It was not until 1982, after decades of searching, that an RNA enzyme was finally discovered. Thomas Cech of the University of Colorado in Boulder found it in Tetrahymena thermophila, a bizarre single-celled animal with seven sexes (Science, vol 231, p 4737).

After that the floodgates opened. People discovered ever more RNA enzymes in living organisms and created new ones in their labs. RNA might be not be as good for storing information as DNA, being less stable, nor as versatile as proteins, but it was turning out to be a molecular jack of all trades. This was a huge boost to the idea that the first life consisted of RNA molecules that catalysed the production of more RNA molecules – “the RNA world”, as Harvard chemist Walter Gilbert dubbed it 25 years ago (Nature, vol 319, p 618).

These RNA replicators may even have had sex. The RNA enzyme Cech discovered did not just catalyse any old reaction. It was a short section of RNA that could cut itself out of a longer chain. Reversing the reaction would add RNA to chains, meaning RNA replicators might have been able to swap bits with other RNA molecules. This ability would greatly accelerate evolution, because innovations made by separate lineages of replicators could be brought together in one lineage.

Evolving replicatorsFor many biologists the clincher came in 2000, when the structure of the protein-making factories in cells was worked out. This work confirmed that nestling at the heart of these factories is an RNA enzyme – and if proteins are made by RNA, surely RNA must have come first.

Still, some issues remained. For one thing, it remained unclear whether RNA really was capable of replicating itself. Nowadays, DNA and RNA need the help of many proteins to copy themselves. If there ever was a self-replicator, it has long since disappeared. So biochemists set out to make one, taking random RNAs and evolving them for many generations to see what they came up with.

By 2001, this process had yielded an RNA enzyme called R18 that could stick 14 nucleotides – the building blocks of RNA and DNA – onto an existing RNA, using another RNA as a template (Science, vol 292, p 1319). Any self-replicating RNA, however, needs to build RNAs that are at least as long as itself – and R18 doesn’t come close. It is 189 nucleotides long, but the longest RNA it can make contains just 20.

A big advance came earlier this year, when Philipp Holliger of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, and colleagues unveiled an RNA enzyme called tC19Z. It reliably copies RNA sequences up to 95 letters long, almost half as long as itself (Science, vol 332, p 209). To do this, tC19Z clamps onto the end of an RNA, attaches the correct nucleotide, then moves forward a step and adds another. “It still blows my mind that you can do something so complex with such a simple molecule,” Holliger says.

“It stills blows my mind that you can do something so complex with such a simple molecule”So biologists are getting tantalisingly close to creating an RNA molecule, or perhaps a set of molecules, capable of replicating itself. That leaves another sticking point: where did the energy to drive this activity come from? There must have been some kind of metabolic process going on – but RNA does not look up to the job of running a full-blown metabolism.

“There’s been a nagging issue of whether RNA can do all the chemistry,” says Adrian Ferré-D’Amaré of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. RNA has only a few chemically active “functional groups”, which limit it to catalysing just a few types of chemical reaction.

Functional groups are like tools – the more kinds you have, the more things you can do. Proteins have many more functional groups than RNAs. However, there is a way to make a single tool much more versatile: attach different bits to it, like those screwdrivers that come with interchangeable heads. The chemical equivalents are small helper molecules known as cofactors.

Proteins use cofactors to extend even further the range of reactions they can control. Without cofactors, life as we know it couldn’t exist, Ferré-D’Amaré says. And it turns out that RNA enzymes can use cofactors too.

In 2003, Hiroaki Suga, now at the University of Tokyo, Japan, created an RNA enzyme that could oxidise alcohol, with help from a cofactor called NAD+ which is used by many protein enzymes (Nature Structural Biology, vol 10, p 713). Months later, Ronald Breaker of Yale University found that a natural RNA enzyme, called glmS, also uses a cofactor.

Many bacteria use glmS, says Ferré-D’Amaré, so either it is ancient or RNA enzymes that use cofactors evolve easily. Either way, it looks as if RNA molecules would have been capable of carrying out the range of the reactions needed to produce energy.

So the evidence that there was once an RNA world is growing ever more convincing. Only a few dissenters remain. “The naysayers about the RNA world have lost a lot of ground,” says Donna Blackmond of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. But there is still one huge and obvious problem: where did the RNA come from in the first place?

"""""""

(Brent) Yep, that's all some pretty interesting stuff, good theory, opens up a lot of possibilities, still kind of a mystery though, few unexplained gaps, but don't let that stop your certainty. Next I guess we drop down to the Goldilocks chemistry, life beginning on the sea floor around volcanic vents. Lots and lots of good possibilities, lets conclude the article.

"""""""Right now, there’s no way to choose between these options. No fossilised vestiges remain of the first replicators as far as we know. But we can try recreating the RNA world to demonstrate how it might have arisen. One day soon, Sutherland says, someone will fill a container with a mix of primordial chemicals, keep it under the right conditions, and watch life emerge. “That experiment will be done.”""""""

(Brent) One day soon, you might create such replicators that we have no evidence actually existed in the first place, but once you get the soup right, the conditions right, I can hear you now "He's alive!!!!" and then you will have an explanation. But until then I am under no obligation to believe in the same possibilities as you do, much less accept them as absolutely factual because as is clearly evident, even your gaps have gaps.

Re: Blocking Evolution

So, let's see ... you post a bunch of stuff that disagrees with the fiction that you've been promoting, which is that the first replicator was a cell ... and agrees with me, that the first replicator was not a cell ... and, therefore, what? You're going to take a congratulatory lap for posting something that supports what I've been saying and not what you've been saying?

RNA world, btw, is almost certainly false. We don't know how life began. Sorry, Brett, that doesn't mean, "therefore, Goddidit."

Also, Brett, I noticed you've ignored my point that the block universe makes a creator superfluous.

You also have not addressed my most recent point: how, Brett, can consciousness collapse a wave function in a block universe in which you claim everything is static and nothing happens? Remember, this was your argument against evolution "happening." I guess stuff can happen after all in such a universe, when it happens to comport with what you prefer to believe?

Re: Blocking Evolution

Ever notice how difficult it is to extract ourselves from the intuitive experience of Time. So I have to ask myself, "does he mean 380,000 years or 380,000 light years From.....

In the Block the big bang is not in the past but in the corner. And I am punning here because I am not sure you can always tell.

DragonFly » August 18th, 2018, 4:00 pm

'Nothing' doesn't have a medium; 'it' doesn't have anything. Perhaps you might want have something like energy be the mandatory basis of existence, 'existence' having no opposite, since 'Nothing' cannot be.

This part is tricky, sound and silence provide a medium, one that we can manipulate. Something from Nothing, that which is the first step in creating the universe in general, forces us to step beyond measurable quantities and math, and science, and to speculate, philosophize, etc... what happens prior to creation. I have set some of these principles forward before, such as....

With the setting aside of Time, Creation is not a past event but a present one. And not present as with presentism as if it is "happening" because that simply restricts time to an undefined moment while keeping it at an objective distance. I hope this makes sense to you as presentism wants the best of both world, the static of the block and the intuitive experience of time. At least that's how it "Feels/Seems" to me. ;-P

Now I am not an expert, but it seems that it is eternalism that allows for something to happen and not happen at the same time, hence its fit with uncertainty. From an outside and philosophically I posit that even though Nothing appears as Something, it remains Nothing. Meaning basically the universe looks real but it is not.

Which bring us back to consciousness, 2D reality, etc... you don't have to create a city, only a virtual city to create an experience, as the universe is nothing without experience. The tree that falls in the forest when there is no one to experience it, simply doesn't fall or evolve, as the case may be.

One more thought as to how Nothing might be compressed so as to even appear as to be something, since our idea of nothingness makes that sound ridiculous, "how can you compress something which is not???" This same paradox happens when M-theory suggest timeline collisions between branes, time, space, or any dimensional directions outside or before this universe. My answer would be, only an Infinite Something could compress that which is Infinitely nothing, thus making the Universe appear. But lets move on,

We do like or stories don't we. it makes a nice timeline, but, imagine all of that is a book, energy, turn the page, bang, turn the page, and just like the static words in the paragraph before me above, the Universe is dimensional crossing space and not time, but as my consciousness is READING, so have I experienced the story according to the time it takes me to read it, and it is only my mind that has connected it as a story, creating or projecting continuity to the whole.

DragonFly » August 18th, 2018, 4:00 pm

So you see that we are star stuff.

In the block, we would be movie stars.

Is this a joke, did you, Dragonfly, actually pun me;-) Your starting to make me nervous,

What I always found funny about Sagan and this comment, by the same token we are all dog poo, this is what we, I would call a clear example of mystification.

Re: Blocking Evolution

So, let's see ... you post a bunch of stuff that disagrees with the fiction that you've been promoting, which is that the first replicator was a cell ... and agrees with me, that the first replicator was not a cell ... and, therefore, what? You're going to take a congratulatory lap for posting something that supports what I've been saying and not what you've been saying?

RNA world, btw, is almost certainly false. We don't know how life began. Sorry, Brett, that doesn't mean, "therefore, Goddidit."

Also, Brett, I noticed you've ignored my point that the block universe makes a creator superfluous.

You also have not addressed my most recent point: how, Brett, can consciousness collapse a wave function in a block universe in which you claim everything is static and nothing happens? Remember, this was your argument against evolution "happening." I guess stuff can happen after all in such a universe, when it happens to comport with what you prefer to believe?

Lets not fight, its scaring the kids,

Besides the repetition of Brett would seem to suggest the misspelling is intentional. perhaps we need a break from one another, a trail separation if you will.

Re: Blocking Evolution

mitchellmckain » August 18th, 2018, 11:52 am wrote:I think consciousness requires taking ownership of events which are not completely determinate. In this way we become the cause of our actions in an idea of causality which is not confined to the standard time-ordered causality used in science.

One cannot own or be the controller of indeterminate events from quantum randomness, which is the problem with libertarianism trying to use this toward a free will in which control by the person is the key to being the cause of action.

The will is not helped by 'random', but is harmed. You need to resolve this.

Random or without cause is only how such things look if you insist on time-ordered causality. But other philosophers such as Aristotle suggested types of causality outside these limitations, and so I see no reason to accept the premise that this is the only legitimate causality. You most certainly CAN own your actions no matter how random they might be and thus take responsibility for your life -- no doubt resulting in actions which are considerably less random.

Free will is not about control over events. That indeed will always be nothing but an illusion. Free will is about making choices about how you respond to the circumstances which confront you. Any number of things however can intercede in the progression to actions and events including biological or chemical events in your own brain and body. This is one of the flaws in systems of ethics like utilitarianism which measures morality based on outcome as if we really had any control over such things -- we do not.

Re: Blocking Evolution

Speaking of which, the court is still waiting for an answer to the question: Exactly what degree of epistemic support does your theory (whatever that is today) which you defend with such unholy fervor enjoy?

Here are your options again, ye who never evades a question:

1. It's true

2. There's a 90% objective probability that it's true

3. There's a 1% objective probability that it's true

4. It might be true

5. It might well be true

6. It might well be a loada crap

7. Don't look at me

Now, before you accuse Brent of evasion, why not clean up your own scuttlebutt?

Re: Blocking Evolution

Good theory, Brent.It has to overcome consciousness as very much seeming to be a brain process. It appears that four neural levels are required as the complexity factor for consciousness to form.

Been meaning to get back to this, had a few distractions on the thread although I have continued to flesh out my perspective.

I hope you are not expecting me to give exact descriptives of the mind body phenomenon, mysteries that neuroscience and the like are still trying to unravel.

But briefly, I do not go so far in the quantum state as Mitchell seems to where free will becomes the height of all existence, Wayne Dyer was screwy to me even in my early twenties, and I was in the midst of the New Age movement where every body thought they could meditatively or magically control reality.

Furthermore as I think of Consciousness, I am not thinking merely of brain activity where my "I" seems to be synonymous with this body. The brain to me is an interface device, and depending upon how well it is functioning, so do we experience variations in our perceptions to our environment. But when we sleep, we are still conscious, when we are in a coma, we are still conscious, so the "consciousness" to which I address along with the quantum reality is not limited to my individual self, as if opening the box the cat is dead merely because I expected it to be dead. In such a case we could fall back to Sam Harris as he speaks of free will and how thoughts seem to arise as they are provided for us and we, at this uppermost level of consciousness wherein we are interacting, simply receive (catch) them and consider them to be our own.

So if I am think the cat is dead, and the cat is dead, that though might have come from a state beneath my wakeful consciousness as it was merely given to me simultaneously.

Consciousness, in its full perspective, is LIFE. I might, through the complexity to which my brain is capable, experience life/consciousness as an individual, as if observing myself in a mirror, and my body as a human being supports such a complex mental acuity, but I do not own it.

So, going back to my TOE, Time/Space/Gravity/Life, life speaks to this ocean of consciousness to which through this human form, I can drink and savor more distinctly than lesser complex forms of life.

DragonFly » August 18th, 2018, 1:56 am

Also to overcome is that the quantum wave function appears to collapse from any kind of interaction, such as with fields/particles.

Now, laying the ground work of consciousness I can address wave function.

If, as we are speaking of a block, everything already IS, as it wereAnd yet in our intuitive experience of the Universe, as it creates the illusion of an undefined future,there must be a reconciliation between our illusion of time, and the static state of the block, this crossover, this reconciliation, is the wave collapse.

In illusion of time is supported by the tension of the wave, a state in which either decision is possible, yet as we open the box in our linear awareness, the wave collapses and what is, seems to become what is.

Any illusion, by the very fact it is supporting a false reality, or even a probably reality, generates a form of tension. Like trying to maintain a lie when every thing in you is screaming to reveal the truth, so does the Newtonian world fall forwards into the truth of the Quantum world.

I have expressed this point before and I do so again, we think of Creation something arising out of nothing and the something new is.

But the creation of the universe is not something real coming out of unreality, rather unreality is given the appearance of realism as it is pulled apart from itself. Magnets together cancel each other out, pull them slightly apart and hold them there (this would be the wave) and the tension becomes a something of sorts. The constant of the speed of light therefore is not merely like the amount of capacity that light is able to travel, rather it is a pure limit, whether the source of that light in at rest or moving 3/4 of light speed, still never will never travel faster than that limit, hence relativity.

Space, Gravity, even Consciousness, as they exist in this universe, do so under the same tension. That which was nothing, neutral, at rest, are forced apart, and the tension to reunite drives them like a carrot in from of a mule.

Re: Blocking Evolution

It is always a waste of time debating opponents of evolution, because they either do not understand the theory and fact of evolution (it is both), or else they do understand these things, yet make deliberately deceptive arguments in an effort to discredit evolutionary theory and fact, hoping to pull the wool over the eyes of those who are not conversant with the subject matter. They have to lean on ignorance or else resort to deceit, because they have no case.

Let’s review: Evolution is a fact and a theory. Evolution is observed to occur, and common descent is a solid, established fact.

The theory of evolution attempts to explain the body of facts. It tries to answer: what are the mechanisms of evolution? Is it Lamarckism? Elan vital? Dumb luck? The finger of God? Intelligent design by aliens? Or something else?

The evidence shows that it’s something else: Natural selection, genetic drift, sexual selection, allopatric speciation, and other mechanisms besides. There is no single mechanism driving evolution.

Are there disputes in evolution? Are there gaps in knowledge? Do evolutionary biologists wrangle and fight and get heated? Of course. One of the biggest points of contention is between adaptationists and non-adaptationists. The former believe that natural selection is the sole or at least primary engine of evolution, whereas the latter believe otherwise, giving primacy to genetic drift, for example.

I dropped above a couple of links to the blog of Larry Moran, a biochemist. Moran is a non-adaptationist, writing in support of “evolution by accident.” A few years ago he had a thread at his blog on this subject and lo and behold, who dropped in but the adaptationist Richard Dawkins? Their dispute became very heated, and was quite entertaining, :-)

The details of their dispute are highly technical, involving microbiology and genotypic vs. phenotypic change. The point, however, is that no one with knowledge of the facts disputes that evolution is a fact, and they do not dispute that evolutionary theory is correct. They simply disagree on the relative weight to assign to the importance of the variety of different mechanisms that drive evolution.

Reg_Prescott came barging into this thread declaring evolution to be “nonsense” and invoking the non-biologist Berlinski for support. Does Reg_Prescott even understand what he is branding as nonsense?

He does not. He has proved this with his posts.

Tellingly, he revealed that he does not understand the difference between fact and theory. So right out of the box he fails.

Then, when I remarked that evolution operates on populations and not on individuals, he immediately snatched something off, I believe, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which talked about how, in evolution, individuals are the “targets of selection.” He even put this in bold red.

I suppose he thought this was a big “gotcha” moment, proving that I didn’t know what I was talking about when I stated that evolution operates on populations and not individuals. Indeed, it was a “gotcha” moment — against Reg, and not me. He showed he did not grasp that “targets of selection” and “evolution” are different concepts — and in so doing, he revealed his ignorance of the very subject he purports to critique.

Let me now quote two famous biologists on this matter:

Ernst Mayer:

The two most important units in evolution are the individual, the principle object of selection, and the population, the stage of diversifying evolution.

Which is exactly what I said. Bold-face by me.

Douglas J. Futuyma:

Biological (or organic) evolution is change in the properties of populations of organisms or groups of such populations, over the course of generations. The development, or ontogeny, of an individual organism is not considered evolution: individual organisms do not evolve. The changes in populations that are considered evolutionary are those that are ‘heritable' via the genetic material from one generation to the next.

Again, bold by me.

So frankly, Reg_Prescott has no understanding whatsoever of that which he purports to critique. So there is no reason to take him seriously.

As to Brent, he too keeps repeating the same hoary old misconceptions — invoking the “mystery” of the first replicating cell; but the first replicator was not a cell; and then he invokes the supposed problem of the Cambrian “explosion,” which of course was not an explosion at all, but evolution taking place over tens of millions of years!

Returning to cells, it should be borne in mind that eukaryotic cells — the basis of all non-microscopic life forms, including, of course, us — took some two billion years to evolve after life first appeared on earth. This is not some kind of magical, hard-to-explain event, but shows the painstaking slowness and incrementalism of evolution, exactly as predicted (or in this case, retrodicted) by evolutionary theory.

On the contrary, the opposite hypothesis is truly perplexing — that some anonymous super-duper creator dude sat with his thumb up his ass for nearly two billion years after creating life, and then a lightbulb went off over his head and he said to himself: “Hey, maybe I should create eukaryotes now! That would make life more interesting and lead to humans to worship me … hmm! Why’d it take me two billion years to figure this out? I must be a great big dummy!”

For those who want to critique evolutionary fact and theory, I suggest you acquaint yourselves with both the fact and the theory before spouting off.

Re: Blocking Evolution

davidm » August 19th, 2018, 10:38 am wrote:It is always a waste of time debating opponents of evolution, because they either do not understand the theory and fact of evolution (it is both), or else they do understand these things, yet make deliberately deceptive arguments in an effort to discredit evolutionary theory and fact, hoping to pull the wool over the eyes of those who are not conversant with the subject matter. They have to lean on ignorance or else resort to deceit, because they have no case.

Oh but these two have a new strategy. They attack science directly claiming that there is no such thing as a scientific methodology. To them everything is rhetoric and "truth" (just another name for power with these guys) belongs to those who shout loudest and lie most convincingly.

Indeed. No scientific theory has more evidence in more diverse fields of study than evolution.

davidm » August 19th, 2018, 10:38 am wrote:The theory of evolution attempts to explain the body of facts. It tries to answer: what are the mechanisms of evolution? Is it Lamarckism? Elan vital? Dumb luck? The finger of God? Intelligent design by aliens? Or something else?

The evidence shows that it’s something else: Natural selection, genetic drift, sexual selection, allopatric speciation, and other mechanisms besides. There is no single mechanism driving evolution.

Well... the finger of God is an unfalsifiable dodgy sort of thing. It may be of no use to scientific inquiry, but you can put that finger behind just about anything if you want.

davidm » August 19th, 2018, 10:38 am wrote:Are there disputes in evolution? Are there gaps in knowledge? Do evolutionary biologists wrangle and fight and get heated? Of course. One of the biggest points of contention is between adaptationists and non-adaptationists. The former believe that natural selection is the sole or at least primary engine of evolution, whereas the latter believe otherwise, giving primacy to genetic drift, for example.

I dropped above a couple of links to the blog of Larry Moran, a biochemist. Moran is a non-adaptationist, writing in support of “evolution by accident.” A few years ago he had a thread at his blog on this subject and lo and behold, who dropped in but the adaptationist Richard Dawkins? Their dispute became very heated, and was quite entertaining, :-)

LOL wow, another absurd extreme to match the idiocy of Darwinist-orthodoxy. Variation and natural selection are two necessary components of a single theory. Variation drives it but the filter of natural selection is what provides a significant element of rational for what we see.

davidm » August 19th, 2018, 10:38 am wrote:The details of their dispute are highly technical, involving microbiology and genotypic vs. phenotypic change. The point, however, is that no one with knowledge of the facts disputes that evolution is a fact, and they do not dispute that evolutionary theory is correct. They simply disagree on the relative weight to assign to the importance of the variety of different mechanisms that drive evolution.

To me this looks like a waste of time arguing over the milk (baby food) rather than moving on with the more important questions, like the role of community in the evolutionary process. Since I was young I have repeatedly heard this nonsense about how human evolution is at an end because civilization protects the weaker members of society (the philosophical foundation of social Darwinism). But to me it is obvious that this is actually a stimulus for the evolution of specialization and technology which can be compared to the evolution of multi-cellular organisms.

davidm » August 19th, 2018, 10:38 am wrote:Reg_Prescott came barging into this thread declaring evolution to be “nonsense” and invoking the non-biologist Berlinski for support. Does Reg_Prescott even understand what he is branding as nonsense?

He does not. He has proved this with his posts.

Tellingly, he revealed that he does not understand the difference between fact and theory. So right out of the box he fails.

I think it is obvious that the opponents of evolution simply do not want there to be a scientific inquiry into the origin life and the species. After all it undermines the justification for various systems of dominance and superiority (like racism and sexism) which gives self-righteous entitlement to some for the abuse of others. Social Darwinism only works for this purpose when you are winning, so when you are fighting a losing battle for an intolerant way of life then you have to resort to other tactics.

I know it is easy to think this is about religion because that is the most obvious demographic motivation. But the truth is that evolution is more compatible with Christianity than creationism because of theodicy. Thus, I think it is really more about culture than religion. Perhaps they will only use Christianity to justify their way of life as long as this works and toss it aside when it no longer serves.

davidm » August 19th, 2018, 10:38 am wrote:As to Brent, he too keeps repeating the same hoary old misconceptions — invoking the “mystery” of the first replicating cell; but the first replicator was not a cell; and then he invokes the supposed problem of the Cambrian “explosion,” which of course was not an explosion at all, but evolution taking place over tens of millions of years!

It is typical of these creationist types (whatever names and disguises these anti-science ideologues may use), that they confuse evolution (theory for the origin of the species) with abiogenesis (hypothesis for the origin of life). They do this intentionally because while the former is well established fact, the latter is an ongoing investigation. But their time (in which they can use this dishonest tactic) is quickly running out as progress is is being made towards turning the hypothesis of abiogenesis into a full bodied theory.

davidm » August 19th, 2018, 10:38 am wrote: On the contrary, the opposite hypothesis is truly perplexing — that some anonymous super-duper creator dude sat with his thumb up his ass for nearly two billion years after creating life, and then a lightbulb went off over his head and he said to himself: “Hey, maybe I should create eukaryotes now! That would make life more interesting and lead to humans to worship me … hmm! Why’d it take me two billion years to figure this out? I must be a great big dummy!”

Their denial of being creationist is intriguing. If true, it is likely they have selectively adopted only the anti-science portion of a creationist culture. But I think the example of Berlinsky is quite instructive. It shows that there can be other philosophical motivations (in his case the horror of social Darwinism) for these denials. Of course this doesn't change the fact that philosophical preferences like this are not a valid objection to scientific findings, and thus they only point to a pseudo-scientific orientation.

davidm » August 19th, 2018, 10:38 am wrote:For those who want to critique evolutionary fact and theory, I suggest you acquaint yourselves with both the fact and the theory before spouting off.

Now you go too far....

I know it seems incomprehensible to you that they could be familiar with the theory and yet be so full of denials in the face of all the evidence. But I think it is obvious that the human capacity for self-delusion and believing what they want despite all evidence to the contrary is practically unlimited.

Re: Blocking Evolution

mitchellmckain » August 19th, 2018, 12:29 pm wrote: But I think the example of Berlinsky is quite instructive. It shows that there can be other philosophical motivations (in his case the horror of social Darwinism) for these denials.

I can’t be as charitable toward Berlinksi as you; he’s a paid shill for the Discovery Institute. I happen to think he’s a charlatan, but I could be wrong. However, even if he is sincere in his beliefs, a supposedly brilliant man ought to know better.

There is no connection whatever between evolutionary biology and social Darwinism. The latter illicitly hijacks biology for a preferred socio-political end, in much the same way the Nazis illicitly hijacked Nietzsche.

Evolution is not about the strong prevailing over the weak. Mostly, it’s about sheer dumb luck.

For example, the phrase, “survival of the fittest” is constantly misconstrued. It does not imply the survival of the biggest, strongest, fastest, sexiest, most handsome, most ruthless, or whatever. It simply refers to the process of differential reproduction, wherein, for any number of reasons, some populations will leave more progeny than others.

Case in point: nylon-eating bacteria. Due to a mutation, some bacteria acquired the ability to digest nylon. This mutation may have happened countless times before. But before the 20th century, it would have been useless, because nylon did not exist. The mutation would not have been advantageous, but either neutral or perhaps even deleterious.

But by sheer dumb luck alone, these bacteria blundered into a nylon factory’s waste pit, and lo and behold, their numbers exploded! Does that mean they were bigger, stronger, faster, sexier, or morally superior to fellow bacteria who could not digest nylon? No! It just means they lucked out!

Re: Blocking Evolution

I would only add, re Berlinski, that his disclaimer of not being an ID advocate is somewhat undercut by his being a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, which is devoted to advancing ID and its being taught in public schools. (stepped AFK and now see David has posted on this)

Had I known this earlier, or that Berlinski's entire experience with biology was a brief stint as a lab assistant, or that he teamed up with Dembski and Behe to tutor ANN COULTER on science (!), or that he operates with a profound political/philosophic bias against ET....i might've been better prepared for the past few days.

At this point, I will invoke our Founder's guidelines (see SCF section) --

The scientists in SCF consider the theory of evolution to be the best model for explaining the biological diversity and genetic homology witnessed in all living things, and accept descent from common ancestry as fact, until proven otherwise. That being said, all faith-based arguments challenging the theory of evolution should go into the "Religion" sub forum in the PCF section and NOT the Biology sub forum.